How to do fundraising right. Starting now.

Fun

23 January 2015

This video about the Syria crisis and linking to a UNHCR giving page is depressing.

It makes several of the mistakes typical of Stupid Nonprofit Ads, but does it with a kind of plodding, self-important, scolding spirit.

As is often true with work like this, it's done by an ad agency. And I've found no evidence that UNHCR has anything to do with the work. It appears to be portfolio-padding. As if someone at the agency said, "Let's do a project that's fun, easy, and morally right!"

The first failure is abstraction. The first 34 seconds (of 75 seconds total) is scenes of New York with no people visible. It's a long half-minute: Not really interesting, but worse, so abstract that it tells you nothing about anything (least of all the suffering of Syrian children).

We then see about 15 seconds of quick shots of what seem to be Syrian people. It ends with 15 seconds of black screen. Because apparently the no-people New York wasn't abstract enough.

The message is entirely in titles over the video. Here's the whole thing:

If the 1.5 million people living in Manhattan fled their homes...
... the world would notice.
1.5 million Syrian children have been forced to flee their country.
We need to notice them.
We need to support them.
We need to welcome them.
We need to care for them.
Start by sharing their story.

Practice what you preach! The ad scolds us for not "noticing" the Syrians. Yet it can't bring itself to actually tell a concrete story about the situation. Just a specious comparison between the real crisis and an imaginary one.

If you've worked in international relief fundraising, you know that a manmade humanitarian disaster in the Middle East is just about the most difficult of fundraising challenges. It's hard to get donors to respond.

But scolding them isn't going to work. Nor will abstract images. These things combine to enter the realm of fundcrushing: anti-fundraising that discourages people from donating because the problem seems to big, abstract, and disconnected from daily life.

The way to get people to care and give is to show them real human stories and give them the power to make a difference in specific ways.

According to unnamed sources, the organization's leadership felt that the change would not cause a stir, citing numerous opinion polls showing strong majorities of Americans supporting equal employment rights for left-handers.

The move prompted a strong negative reaction from staunch right-handers, who saw the change as a betrayal of their values. Thousands of them cancelled their donations to the organization.

"If they think they can turn their back on us just because their polling and research says it's safe, they've got another think coming," said one right-handed spokesperson.

Global Perception immediately responded to the backlash by reverting to their previous no-left-hander policy. Which prompted another backlash from left-handed groups, who were already gathered to celebrate the previous policy change.

"If they think they can turn their back on us just because pressure from right-hander groups says it's safe, they've got another think coming," said one left-handed spokesperson.

What draws fundraisers to abstraction? In this case, the reality is that the organization does specific activities designed to bring about specific changes. But the ad just says "Lift lives." That's a metaphor for helping people. And it's only a metaphor. Not the real thing.

The ad skips over the problem that donors can help solve by giving. Instead, we get glimpses of a solution, plus a fake outcome (people floating a foot off the ground).

Donors may not understand your programs, but they are not stupid. You don't have to say to them, What we're going to do is sort of like making people float above the ground -- the way you might with a young child who has no life experience to ground his comprehension.

Fundraising is about connecting donors with solvable (and real) problems. Empowering them to make the world specifically better. When you symbolize that change with an abstraction, you're just blowing smoke.

06 January 2014

Sometimes a stupid nonprofit ad campaign has an odd little grain of smart in it. Like this print ad campaign, done for Crossroads Community Services, a social services organization in New York.

The idea: research shows that charitable giving is good for givers in a number of ways.

That's absolutely true. It's one of the great and under-appreciated truths of our work.

In this case, though, it plays out in a way that guarantees the truth will connect with very few people:

Since it's unreadable in this small size (it's nearly unreadable in full size; if you think people ought to read your copy, don't reserve it out), here's what the small copy says:

Research shows that simple acts of kindness can improve your overall mental and physical health.

True enough. Charitable giving and other acts of kindness do all kinds of good things for donors.

But that's not why donors give. Donors give out of compassion, kindness, and a desire to make the world a better place, along with a host of other motivations. Those things are themselves the rewards, as far as donors are concerned. The campaign is on thin ice, because it fails to speak to the reasons donors give. It relies on a secondary. Secondary benefits are great -- when you use them in a secondary way.

Three other problems:

The photography obscures the message. The beauty shots of the homeless people make it unclear who's in the photo. The man in the ad above could just as easily be a doctor who's able to help you improve your health through medical care as a homeless person who needs your help.

Fundraising without a clear and specific call to action seldom works.

Print ads are rarely effective at raising funds (especially in expensive media markets like NYC). There are exceptions where they break through and really work. But cleverness not one of those exceptions.

What we have here is another triumph of style over substance, clever over effective, concept over clarity.

25 November 2013

There are times when we'd all love to break free from the bonds of the ordinary: to ignore gravity and soar through the air; to sing with a full-throated beauty, instead of the croaky, tuneless voice we actually have; to be able to walk through walls, see the future, or breathe under water.

The one thing that makes monuments to irrelevance like this so entertaining are the things the creators say about them. Here's what someone from the creative agency that did this video said to explain the work:

By taking the whale out of its cavernous ocean environment, we created this surrealist moment that put these animals’ true size in context, prompting the viewer to think about them in an entirely new way.

Oh good. People can think about whales in an entirely new way. Of course, it's a way that isn't actually real, but it's different. Will that lead them to donate, volunteer, or do anything else? Of course not!

Please take note: A visually striking image is not fundraising. It's also not marketing, brand-building, or anything else worth doing. Unless you're doing pure art. Fundraising is about action. If you aren't presenting people with a specific action they can take to make the world better, you're just making noise.

I want to point out that Whale and Dolphin Conservation, to their credit, is apparently not a participant in this act of nonprofit stupidity. The video is not to be found on their website, or any of their social media outlets. Good for them. All too often, nonprofit organizations get snookered by the people that create them into wasting their marketing on things like this. Sometimes they even pay for it. Or, worse yet, replace real fundraising with it.

All we have here is some portfolio padding for a creative agency. But be careful: They may try to use this to get paying work from unsuspecting nonprofits. Don't let them fool you!

31 October 2013

Online fundraising is a lot like Halloween: Part fun, part scary. It has plenty of tricks and plenty of treats to keep you on your toes.

Online fundraising "tricks"

It's a "cold" medium. The way people read email is different from traditional media. It's fast, action-oriented, impatient. Not good for emotion and compassion -- the basic ingredients of charitable giving. That explains the response/conversion rates -- numbers that would sink the entire endeavor if it weren't for the low cost.

The donors who really want you can (maybe) find you. The fanatics who really should be on your list can now Google you. They still might not find you, but you can improve your chances with good SEO.

The donors are younger. (This is also treat; see below.) Younger donors have low retention rates. That shows up in the comparatively poor retention of online donors.

It's crowded. If you thought the mailbox was bad, with it's dozens of competitors every day -- think about the inbox: Someone who's a habitual online donor probably gets a hundred or more emails per day from nonprofits that have something to say.

It's cheap -- so cheap, you can afford to be stupid. And being stupid is expensive, no matter how little it cost in the first place.

Online fundraising "treats"

The donors are younger. Younger donors give higher average gifts, and if you can keep them, they'll stay around longer. The trick: define your target younger audience as those between 45 and 65.

Average gifts are high.

It's two-way. Donors can actually interact with you. That's a foundation for a meaningful relationship.

It's multimedia. Do you have a cause that's hard to capture with words? Online, you can show pictures, videos, live cams -- whatever it is that makes the case.

It's cheap. No spiraling postage, paper, printing costs. That makes a lot of things possible. It also lowers the risk of innovation.

23 July 2013

It's far, very far, from smart. It suffers from a deadly level of abstraction: It's a campaign to help improve literacy among indigenous Australian kids in a specific community. So far, so good. But rather than get specific about the need and its solution, they collapse it all into one ambiguous symbolic act: raise your hand.

Okay. Hand raised.

Boy do I feel better.

High concept, low communication. This is a common problem in fundraising when you don't pay attention to what it really takes to motivate people to give.

A lot of outdoor advertising is being donated to the Wall of Hands, including whiz-bang interactive touch screens that allow people to "raise their hands" in shopping malls:

Shoppers can use the screens to take pictures of themselves raising their hands in support of the campaign with supporters able to share their photo on the big screen.

The value of all that donated space: $1.6 million. The fundraising goal: $40,000. That's a return-on-investment of 0.025, or 2-1/2¢ for every dollar. (And that's just the value of the donated space. There are a lot of other costs.

(A more recent comment on the story claims that the correct fundraising goal is instead $400,000. That lifts the expected ROI to a majestic 0.25. I'm just guessing here, but I bet the $40,000 is the more accurate one.)

In other words, this campaign is projected to be a complete waste of time and effort. It's just an exercise in creativity, using a worthy cause to prop itself up.

You might say, "Why sniff at $40,000 free from the campaign? No harm done, and some meaningful good will happen."

That's only if you don't count time wasted by the charity, opportunity lost because they're doing this instead of something that would actually raise serious funds, and the terrible cost of making meaningless noise in the marketplace.

It's another shameful example of the ad industry taking a nonprofit to the cleaners -- and being thanked all the way.

13 June 2013

Why can we imagine an advertising creative director ending it all because someone wants to see proof that his work actually accomplishes what it's meant to accomplish?

Easy: He knows it won't come out looking good.

He knows that what he does is a flimsy construction built on a bad combination of wishful thinking, BS, and artistic self-expression. He knows it!

Take the warning: don't work with standard ad agencies. Too many are not about accomplishing your goals. They have their own goals. They've been misusing their commercial clients for decades. They'll do the same to you.

That bright orange coral stuff is actually a melted-down candle! Get it? Oh, you didn't realize this whole thing is about Earth Hour? You didn't see the tiny logo in the upper right? You didn't know candles are part of the Earth Hour observance? You haven't heard of Earth Hour?

Well anyhow, see how that melted wax that looks like coral is sheltering the pretty little fish! See? What? You say you aren't conversant in coral-reef ecosystems? You didn't know that looks like coral?

Well, surely you made the central connection: Light your candles for Earth Hour, and that's like sheltering fish and doing other helpful things for the environment. Oh, c'mon! You didn't make that connection? What do we have to do for people these days? Spell it out?

Seasoned fundraisers know that if you want people to do anything, you have to tell them clearly, directly, and repeatedly. Not through complex visual metaphors that require a lot of background to understand.

This is an example of stupid nonprofit advertising because the creators refused to consider what people know, and chose to assume everyone knows what they know. Pretty pictures that carry hidden messages are not how you influence people.

What this blog is about
The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It's not about any technology, medium, or technique. It's about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It's already here. More.

About the bloggerJeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 20 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff.brooks [at] truesense [dot] com. More.

Instead of talking at donors, TrueSense is proving it's smarter to listen. Asking donors how they prefer to give. Because we’re about creating relationships and building trust and communicating honestly and powerfully. One to one. Want to talk fundraising? Drop me a line.

Branding can boost fundraising

Is branding evil? Of course not. It only seems that way sometimes because it is so often wrongly applied to nonprofits.

Discover how to make branding improve your fundraising in The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand: Motivating Donors to Give, Give Happily, and Keep on Giving. It's easier -- and less expensive -- than you may think! In this ground-breaking new book you'll find out...

Why commercial-style branding is so destructive when applied to nonprofits.

The 7 essential elements of a successful fundraising call to action that will motivate donors to give.

How to find and use images that remind donors why they care about your cause.

How to become your donors' favorite cause and set your organization apart in their hearts and minds.

Irresistible fundraising!
Raise funds with your eyes open. Skip the guesswork. Show your boss what really works. This book takes you on a fact-filled and memorable journey through writing, design, strategy, and the mental game of effective fundraising.